You've got to serve somebody

As an aging political radical, I feel a certain responsibility to uphold my counter-culture ideals, but those are hard-wired by now and I don't often need to examine them or my ability to stay true to myself. I have noticed in my mature years that life is a series of compromises, and it becomes hard to be consistent, when the real need is to be practical about survival and, as Beth said, "Let's pay the bills."

Beth, our fearless leader, is a visionary who has an immense heart, especially regarding the Market, which is a highly spiritual undertaking for many of us. I trust her completely to have the best interests of our eclectic group in mind with the far-ranging decisions she makes daily. Kim's instincts for how to keep Market thriving are finely tuned as well, and our management team is dynamic, amazing, and so very thoughtful about how to move into the future, which comes every Friday at midnight, relentlessly, rain or shine.

Us old folks feel the erosion of our safety and a certain confusion about what the kids are doing this week on our lawns. Life moves quickly and we move more slowly every day, and those are contradictions that we have to find a way to live with. I just want to make my art, to be in the flow state where my hands and heart and brain are working together to make something out of nothing, but the stuff piles up and I have to sell it or give it away. If I want to stay healthy and pay those bills, I need the customers that Beth and Kim deliver to my booth space. I need them to want just as much of me as I am willing to lay out before them.

The vulnerability is constant, but I do gain strength from those others around me and safety is relative. I'm content with the amount of exposure I get at the Market, and I can return home each Saturday evening with my soul intact, plus a few groceries. No one can do what I do, no one can be me. That's firmly established at this point in my life.

I'm grateful more than I can say for the opportunities for connection that I earn through my participation in the Market. After sitting taking minutes at just a few Standards Committee meetings, I am in awe of the members of this group who meet so frequently to uphold and protect our opportunity to thrive by making sure we stick with our Maker is the Seller ethic, to a fine point. They insist that all of us are consistent in our values and keep trying for greater artistry and success without losing what sets us apart from the entirety of the global marketplace. No one can be what we are collectively, either, because each one of us is held to such a high standard. We have formed the habit of looking minutely at whatever we do and we don't rush into things. When I signed the articles of incorporation as Board Chair back in the early eighties, I was scared and wondered what we had wrought. What was I thinking then?

Looking minutely is true for all of our committees. The Holiday Market folks keep the budget tight so we can all afford the show. The Sustainability Committee brought us sorting and durable flatware, and locally produced canvas totebags to replace plastic. They keep looking at every aspect of our organization to see how much more closely we can serve our values of treading lightly on the Earth and controlling our waste and enthusiasm to make sensible decisions, and they work with the Food Court Committee to find products that compost well and reduce our carbon footprint. Budget Committee, obviously working for our pocketbooks, and the sweet, gently Kareng Fund committee think about us and care for us. All of these volunteers bring their human selves to the office and share what makes us real and united in our wish to do well while we make our way.

This rare, precious center of our lives attracts a lot of attention. Everyone wants to touch and feel what we do, sense the source of the vitality that we are sustaining. It's like the Jell-O art, wondrous and simple, but complex and seductive. So we share ourselves, put it all out on display, and sometimes have to handle the over-enthusiastic response. Witness the drum circle excess. We love the drums, when they are cooking and providing a heartbeat. We hate the way the Free Speech Plaza has been twisted to allow sales of illegal and just unfortunate items that do not meet our standards and represent a threat to our safety and wellness. We work hard to find solutions to problems like this so that free speech is upheld, but the people taking advantage of the opportunity are held to account.

So when our attractiveness got the attention of a major global corporation and they selected us to serve as a background for an innovative product launch, Beth and Kim spent many, many hours discussing with them how they might present their ideas without taking advantage of us. At each step along the way, they thought carefully about what would be presented and how that would benefit us. They insisted that these folks get to know our culture and tread lightly on our sacred ground.

In short, the American Express product Serve is a new payment system designed to make spending easier for customers who aren't in the habit of using cash. To my mind, cash is the simplest way to control my finances, because I can only spend what I have, and that works for me. But I have noticed that many people have to take the extra step of going to get some cash so that they can shop at our Market, that check-writing has become an annoying task to many that they don't feel safe about (providing personal information) and that people are sometimes reluctant to go all the way across the street to use a credit card, and the occasional sale is lost. Time is moving more quickly and people have been trained to expect immediate results for everything. This program provides a way for an instant cash transaction from customer to me, without the cash.

I laugh, because cash will not go out of style in my life, but I can see the genius of these people who found a niche of society that is growing and is not well served. There are tons of outdoor markets, craft and food and food carts and festivals, all over the world, and the systems for purchasing items at them have not evolved. Artisans can use the clunky card processing systems of the past, expensive and annoying. We pay 5% on our credit card sales, and the staff spends increasing time being our processor. It's barely working, and it's time to find better ways. Let me say now that I disclaim any endorsement of any such product, and I participate out of my wish to be practical. Every Etsy seller has to have a Paypal or some such account to receive payment, some bank account or something. Nothing is new about that.

I appreciate the fact that Beth has seen the trends and is working toward a better, more sustainable group of options of which this Serve program is one. It's a little start-up of a big corporation and it may not fly, but it's a new idea that might just be a way for me to make more money more easily. It might not, but it's easy enough to try it out for the four weeks the AmEx and media folks will be on site introducing it. It won't work for everyone. You have to join up, and only members can access it, and like any online service or credit card service, you have to give them your personal information so they can identify you and keep that information secure. and it's all free, free, free, and they will even give you $15 "cash" to spend when you activate the account.

Of course I have a certain mistrust of that, but having been online in several capacities for many years now, I don't feel exposed anymore. The brazillions of people online don't notice or care about me unless they google Jell-O Art and find me there. I am no more exposed by this than by being on the bicycle chic website where candid photos of Eugene cyclists are posted. In the big giant world, I am just not important. I'm a little old lady who sells tote bags and t-shirts and baseball caps and Jell-O art and if the government wanted to come and get me and mine my brain for the keys to creativity and my solutions to global climate change, they would have already implanted that chip and put me in their gulag. Really, getting another credit card account is such a minor thing, that I signed right up.

I'm certain my trust in Beth and Kim is not misplaced. I'm fairly certain these folks trying to promote this little product are trying hard to touch us without leaving marks. Of course a thousand free tote bags are not going to help my bag sales (you can see some of mine at the right), even if I point out that they used a toxic PVC-based ink on their "eco-friendly" bags (locally printed, but not by me), and that their groovy seed tags don't identify the species and that any gardener would refrain from planting random wildflowers in their gardens. I will probably plant one, because I'm so curious to see what species they are and if they will even grow, but my healthy skepticism about any kind of "green" promotion is intact. I know just how hard it is to uphold any ideals in the face of practicality, marketing, and the big, big world.

We're in it, that world, and on this Earth Day we can stop to see how little we are, how short our lives, how giant our capacity for compromise and destruction, and how we must remain vigilant about being thoughtful, kind, and caring.

We must project outward from the heart. One of the many wise people who access Facebook, another giant that threatens everything we stand for, recently posted this online:

Live without pretending
Love without depending
Listen without defending
Speak without offending

That went on my refrigerator immediately. You can't be too careful, and you can't be too fearful. Life moves quickly, as Lynn says, it is short but it is wide. I think we can accommodate this corporate campaign without giving up even a little piece of our ideals. They want to touch us, they want what we have, but no one can have what we have. It's ephemeral. When I go, all of this construct of my life goes with me. The Jell-O may live on in perpetuity, but no one will make it like I make it.

It looks like it may be sunny tomorrow. Thank you weather, thank you so much in advance. We will gather, we will stand on the Earth (albeit covered with cement right where we stand) among the trees (which sometimes get in our way and other times provide us blissful shade), and we will enjoy the community we can touch and be a part of, but never control.

Stay calm, folks. We're juggling a lot of things right now, but we're standing solid. We can handle the attraction, we can handle the attention. On the upside, people reading the Wall Street Journal, and people living in New York City, envy us. You can't complain about that.

Change is the only constant, uncertainty is the only certainty. See you on the Park Blocks, (god willing and the creek don't rise.)